Spike and Season 8

[maggie2]

It's not so obvious to me that Spike isn't going to play a role in season 8

 

I’m under the impression that a lot of people assume that Spike will certainly not figure in season 8, and that Joss either never was interested in Spike (or Spuffy) or he views that story as settled and is just moving on.   Of course, we won’t know until the tale is done, but it does seem to me that it would be very strange if the same writer who knew that Angel marked Buffy for life didn’t think that Spike, who played at least as major a role in Buffy’s story, could vanish from her story without trace. But all I want to argue for here is the proposition that based on what we have seen in the first 21 issues, there is plenty of room for Spike to enter the story, perhaps even in an important way.

 

Before getting to the text, it’s worth observing that Scott Allie has said (Slayalive Q&A #20, question 4) that Joss has the right to use the characters in Angel as much as he likes. There thus seems to be no contractual reason for Spike to remain offstage. All that will matter is what the story demands. 

 

While I wouldn’t go so far as to argue that the story demands that Spike play a role, there is a fair amount of text at this point that would retrospectively set up his appearance.

 

1.   Buffy is the main character of the series. (Duh). When last we saw her, Spike was arguably the most important person in her world – the one who was in her heart, the one with whom she shared the fiery hands of passion, the one whose name was the last word she spoke in the entire series, the one with whom she spent what could well have been her last night in the world, the one who stood by her when all her other significant folks kicked her out of her own house, etc. etc. etc. The status of Buffy’s relationship with the person who was so very important to her was left hanging at the end of the story. It matters how it is resolved. Really. Angel hung over her story for years. It’s unreasonable to think that Spike vanished without a trace in 18 months, or that the resolution of Buffy's story with Spike is insignficant.

 

And it’s not like the writers of season 8 are insensible of the fact that romantic story lines from season 7 need to be resolved in season 8. Pretty much the first thing we learn about Faith in #6 is that Robin ended up not surprising her – she’s still very much alone. It took a while, but we finally learn that Xander really did spend some serious time mourning Anya (#13). If Joss really wanted to close off the Spike/Buffy story line, he’d have done so much the way Faith/Robin got closed out. He didn’t.

 

2. On the contrary, one of the first things Joss tells us about Buffy is that she doesn’t know the significance of the Immortal to either Angel or Spike.  It opens the door to the possibility that she does not know that they tried to track her down in TGIQ. Far from closing the story down, Joss offers a tantalizing detail that reminds us that we really don’t know where things stand between Buffy and Spike.

 

3. There is the mysterious absence of Spike from Buffy’s dream space (#3), where every other significant figure in her life is present. (With the possible exception of Hank). Angel is here, as is Riley. Tara, and Dawn, and Faith, and, Joyce, and all the major villains and the Scoobies. There are cubes from early in Buffy’s life through season 7 (Xander with an eye patch; Caleb).   There are three ways I can think of to account for this fact. (a) The scenes and figures drawn were chosen by Jeanty and have no particular significance. But Enisy asked Allie about this, and Allie says that Joss did interact with Jeanty both about what should be there and about what should not be there (Slayalive Q&A #19, question 6). (b) Buffy really doesn’t see Spike as an important person in her life (beyond his usefulness in her erotic fantasies).   That defies imagination. Whether it’s the fiery hands of passion or the bathroom scene, Spike has impacted Buffy enormously, both in good ways and in bad ways. (c) The absence is significant in a way that has yet to be revealed.

 

4. Buffy finally mentions Spike in A Beautiful Sunset sandwiched between Angel and Riley. As already noted, both Angel and Riley figured in her dream space. They’ve also both (now) appeared in the series. Angel in a nod to what lies firmly behind Buffy (#20); and Riley as either a villain or an undercover ally (#19). If two of the three major loves in Buffy’s life deserve a role in the series, it is even stranger that Joss couldn’t be arsed to close out a dangling thread about her most recent romantic involvement. 

 

5. There are plenty of places where one can read resonances with Buffy’s history with Spike, things that could take on different shades if Spike turns out to be part of this story.   In the first battle we are shown, Buffy is in a church killing a demon with a cross. The last time we saw Buffy in a church with a demon, the demon was draped on the cross in one of the most arresting images of the entire series.   General Voll points to the crater at Sunnydale and says “look what she did to her hometown”. But when Buffy last had anything to say about what caused that crater, her answer was “Spike”.   In Buffy’s dream about Xander, she promises to be gentle “this time”, yet knocks off Xander’s head and worries about being dark. There are resonances here with her not-so-gentle relationship with Spike, which was epitomized in the alley scene in Dead Things where she didn’t quite knock his head off. Buffy even says “oh balls” here, which is a line that comes from that scene in DT. Ethan’s entrance into her dream is teased as Spike (we just see his Spike-like clothes at the end of #2) and Buffy explicitly objects to him calling her “pet”.    Skipping ahead, and going in less detail: Dracula’s relationship with Xander mirrors in some ways Spike’s relationship with Buffy (evil vampire crossing lines to help the good guys because of love); Willow tells Frey that the most important men in Buffy’s life are lurks (and that that fact makes it too simple to say that Buffy’s life is about eliminating them); and in the most recent issue we have Clem and Harmony allied, the two demons who were friendly with Spike during his time in Sunnydale. None of these allusions or references have to mean anything. But they are available to mean something if Spike turns out to figure in the story. 

 

So we’ll see. It’s true that we’re nearly two years into the comics. But we’re also just over half way through the “season”. And in many of the seasons on Buffy, the real contours of the season aren’t revealed until the second half. It’s too soon to claim that Joss is going to pay no attention to Spike.  Indeed, I tend to think that the strange absences and silences point to a larger role rather than a smaller one – since the failure to close out Spike/Buffy quickly seems to demand some sort of pay-off when the story finally is continued.

Comments

[shapinglight]

Hi Maggie. Will do my best to attempt to answer your comment. I didn't mean to move the discussion to Spuffy. However, if Spike were to be in the comic, the question of Spuffy would have to arise, wouldn't it, so it sort of naturally follows?

I don't think Joss wanted to sweep Spuffy under the carpet in Chosen. I think that, in fact, he gave Spuffy 'shippers about as much as he felt he could get away with - certainly far more than the rabid Bangels like our friends on IDW thought they should have had. However, I think it highly likely he wouldn't want to go through that again and will not revisit that storyline in any way, which, in the context of this comic, means keeping Spike well out of things.

I do share some of your concerns about A: AtF. Brian Lynch has, IMO, made a number of huge mistakes - major, major things - but what he's done with Spike hasn't really been one of them (unless he ends up with that wretched Spider creature). Okay, I dislike the harem thing intensely, but I can't call it a major mistake because Spike isn't really a major character in A: AtF. In fact, he doesn't really have a story. This has made me grit my teeth at times, but Lynch has given me other good Spike stuff (his three solo series) that have made me able to take the bad with the good, if you see what I mean. After all, A: AtF is about Angel. I just have to accept that. So yes, I am still glad that Spike went to IDW, if only because I got Spike: Asylum, Spike: Shadow Puppets and Spike: After the Fall out of it, and Lynch's love of the character shines through in every issue of those, even though his interpretation of him may not be quite the same as mine.

FWIW, I don't hate season 8, or love A: AtF. I just don't like season 8 very much, and I find A: AtF more accessible, because apart from Buffy herself, it features the characters I like the best. I don't like Comics Buffy and I resent being made to dislike her, because I loved Buffy in the show. I also don't distrust Joss exactly (I've never thought of him in trust/distrust terms), but I am disappointed to discover once again (my first clue was on reading the original Fray comics series) that what interests him most in his own 'verse and what interests me most seem to be poles apart.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

I am disappointed to discover once again (my first clue was on reading the original Fray comics series) that what interests him most in his own 'verse and what interests me most seem to be poles apart.

What interests you most that is poles apart? What was it you saw in Fray that brought this realization? Just me being curious. :)

[shapinglight]

One of the things I love most about the Buffyverse is its grounding in the real world - as if it's our world only skewed sideways. Its mundanity, if you like. I also love the underlying mythos of the world, with the Fanged Four and the Slayer legacy etc. However, in Fray, I found myself confronted with a character I didn't know or care about and who had no connection to the characters I did know and care about, and who simply wasn't interesting when cut off from that Slayer mythos, even though Fray's disconnection from it was an actual plot point.

I also thought Joss's sci fi world-building was pretty crap, frankly, and unfortunately Firefly only confirmed me in that view. I've managed to watch about half the episodes, but find them so irritating for so many reasons that I've never been able to get through all of them. Yet that show was Joss's big love.

I hope that answers your question?

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

If Joss did want to pretend that Spike never existed, it'd be the first time ever that a major relationship just went poof from the 'verse without leaving any impact. Angel was always present, even though I'd bet large sums of money that Joss never had any intention of having Bangel as a final outcome. It's just that Bangel in seasons 1-3 shaped Buffy in ways that could never be overlooked. Riley, who I don't think affected Buffy deeply, still got carted out for a (horrible) reprise in season 6, and was mentioned again in season 7, and is back again in season 8. So I'm just not understanding why people are so sure that Spike, and Spike alone, is just gone, having left virtually no footprint on the shape of the series. Especially since Spike looms very large over the last three seasons, and was last depicted as the person closest to Buffy.

I mention the mischaracterization of Spike in AtF only to say that it detaches me enough from the character Lynch is writing about that I don't really think I'm getting stories about the real Spike. If there weren't other things that I think are irreparable, I'd probably go with it and enjoy the stuff about Spike that I can enjoy and pretend the rest just isn't there. We'll have to do a big wrap up when AtF is over. I don't want to go into full slam mode until Lynch has had a chance to tell the whole story. But my real problems aren't related to Spike.

I'm sympathetic to your concerns about not liking Buffy. I don't think I had been clear that this was a big factor for you and presumably for other people. I guess for me it feels like a bit of a vindication. I wrote an essay about Buffy and Faith a good while back where I said that it seemed to me that because Buffy had not yet hit rock bottom that there were still issues in play concerning her self-righteousness and some other darkish aspects to her. And sure enough, that seems to be exactly what Joss is exploring. I would be shocked if Joss leaves Buffy in darkish places, but since I always thought that it was an element to her, I'm quite delighted to see it finally worked through. So I guess this would be a point of strong difference between us. One of the things I like best is one of the things that most puts you off the series.

[shapinglight]

If Joss did want to pretend that Spike never existed, it'd be the first time ever that a major relationship just went poof from the 'verse without leaving any impact.

I just think that Joss may feel the threesome pic and the one oblique reference is quite enough. He probably feels it's enough of an acknowledgement and would be astonished to learn that people want more.

I'm sorry. I just don't think he has a role for Spike in this story and that there are certain aspects of the Spike/Buffy story he would rather avoid bringing up again (even though he signed off on them in the show).

FWIW, I think he hasn't a place for Angel either. Angel only appeared in no 20 because that was a special issue showcasing the defunct Buffy cartoon. Joss didn't write it, and if that issue had been missed out, the story wouldn't have suffered at all because we didn't learn anything in it that we didn't already know.

Riley, however, does have a role to play if only because he's a soldier. That IMO is why he's in it.

But no, I don't think Joss sees Spike as having any particular meaning to Buffy any more and I'm not expecting him to turn up in the story. Like I said, I would love to be wrong, though even if I am, I would be very nervous about what Joss would do with him.

I don't want to go into full slam mode until Lynch has had a chance to tell the whole story. But my real problems aren't related to Spike.

Likewise. There are far more egregious errors than anything that's been done with Spike, though him being my favourite character, I of course feel it more when I think he's been written badly.

You know, I don't think Joss is exploring Buffy's darkness in the way you think. I don't mean that he expects us to endorse everything that Buffy's done, but I don't think he's aware quite how badly she's coming across. I would expect her friends to behave rather differently towards her than just to complacently accept everything she does if we were really supposed to disapprove of it so much.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

We'll see about Spike. I would argue very hard for the proposition that Spike is essential to Buffy's story up through The Chosen, and that Joss knows this and approves of it. He couldn't have written things the way he did if he was insensible of just how central Spike is.

But I do agree that part of "everything's all different" could well be that Buffy's story is no longer really focused on the things represented by the Angel/Buffy/Spike movement. I still think Joss has to do something to move us from a world where Spike was genuinely emotionally intimate with Buffy to a world where Buffy's loneliness is an explicit theme. Is she there because she rejected Spike and that intimacy? Or because he died and it was forced on her? And as I've said, if he fails to offer some kind of bridge, then y'all are right about how bad season 8 is.

I look forward to some interesting conversations about AtF once it wraps up. I'd love to compare notes with you on it.

You know, I don't think Joss is exploring Buffy's darkness in the way you think. I don't mean that he expects us to endorse everything that Buffy's done, but I don't think he's aware quite how badly she's coming across. I would expect her friends to behave rather differently towards her than just to complacently accept everything she does if we were really supposed to disapprove of it so much.

I have always oscillated on this -- quite wildly. On good days, I think that Joss has ALWAYS challenged our conventional assumptions about heroes, and that the ambiguities of his two leads are totally intentional, and are meant as a critique of the genre and its typical audience. On bad days, I think it's an accident that these interesting ambiguities are there and/or that the writers are so bought into the notion that heroes are essentially good, and thus fail to notice how badly they're really behaving, and there is thus a huge tension between what I'm seeing and what they want me to see.

I have mostly sided with the former view, especially in the wake of the release of season 8. NFFY was huge for me because I think it's very clear that Buffy and Faith have inverted moral positions, and because the arc goes back to the season 3 stuff in a way that calls attention to just how murky it really was all along. At a minimum, the second arc of season 8 is very easily read as part of a show that has always meant us to think harder about good/evil dichotomies. Jane's comments on the latest issue say that this has always been intentional. The fact that ME explicitly chose to use Angel's hero music when he was locking the lawyers up with Darla and Dru suggests that they are quite intentional about contrasting the look and feel of the show with the actual moral content of what's going on. It opens up space for us to judge the characters independently of the cues of music or lighting or even of the reactions of characters within the show -- and those tensions really are interesting. I suppose at a minimum, I'm free to read the show that way even if the writers really don't know that Faith's original failure was an accident; or that Buffy was pretty darned abusive towards Spike in season 6; or that Angel ordering Lindsey's execution is seriously problematic. The show has stressed the distance between appearance and reality, and that frees up a lot of space for interesting engagement with the show, regardless of authorial intent.

Stray thought: OTOH, my negative reaction about AtF is almost entirely centered on the fact that I'm pretty darned sure that Brian is in the latter camp. He's done a lot of whitewashing, that suggests that he'd rather live in a world where heroes are 90% good, rather than the show I was watching where (in the case of Angel) the protagonist was always at serious risk of going the other way, and was always pretty mixed between good and bad. So I do have some sense that Buffy (all versions) and AtS really do have an intentional distance between the appearance of things and the truth of what's going on.

[shapinglight]

Interesting. Not sure I can answer this comment in the way that it deserves, but I'll give it a try.

One final comment on the subject of Spike's importance to Buffy. Of course, I agree with you that he was important at the time. If Joss hadn't thought so, or had listened to the fans who shouted loudest (the Bangels), Spike would have had a minimal role in season 7 or possibly just come back as a villain. Having said all which, I still think Joss considers Spike's story with Buffy to be over and that she already has all the people that really matter to her around her, ie. Willow (in particular), Xander and Dawn. Not being a big 'core four' fan (or 'core three' as I suppose it is now, since Giles has been more or less written out), this has greatly reduced my enjoyment of the comic right from the start. Buffy and her friends are back in this odd, incestuous little huddle and to me, that seems like a big step backwards, but I don't think Joss sees it that way at all. He sees Willow and Xander as being the two people who are most important in Buffy's life. Everyone else - even Angel - is a thing of the past. Ephermeral. And that includes Spike. I don't believe Joss has a big role for him in the story. I don't believe he even has a small one.

But we'll see.

Also, while I agree with you about the moral ambiguity of Angel in his own show being quite deliberate and Lynch having either totally failed to grasp it or chickened out of showing it in the comic, I don't think the same is true of Buffy. I do think Joss meant to show her as flawed and human, but I don't think he ever set out deliberately to show her as morally ambiguous.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Agree that Buffy is much less ambiguous than Angel. But there's always been a delicate question hanging over her, mostly regarding her self-righteousness and her corresponding tendency to (overly) harshly judge her enemies and to fail to see problems in those who are on her side. That lack of judgment/perspective seems to be worse (and more dangerous) now that she's sans watcher and in the position of leader. Fundamentally she's a total hero, but I like the shading, and I think it's deliberate.

I've never been a fan of the Scoobies either, but I did a fairly intensive rewatching of season 2 and the first half of season 3, and there's a lot more tension and distance and generic complexity than I picked up on to begin with. They are friends, but there's also a real hostility between Buffy on one side and Willow/Xander on the other. It reflects the tension ordinary folks have with heroes, who are needed but also feared (and resented). So I really don't mind revisiting them, especially if the purpose is to pull off the facade of the cozy chummy good old years of high school. And I tend to think we're going to get some facade pulling.

But of course, I'll always miss the vampires. I should add that I agree that it's unlikely that Spike will be back as a permanent fixture. I just think it would be astonishing if we didn't get more story about how Spike got (or gets) moved out of Buffy's life; and that Joss's refusal to tie this off quickly and painlessly signals that there's something in that transition that is important to Buffy's on-going story (even if Spike himself has no future in that story.)

[shapinglight]

and that Joss's refusal to tie this off quickly and painlessly signals that there's something in that transition that is important to Buffy's on-going story (even if Spike himself has no future in that story.)

And I'm afraid that I'll continue to believe that it's not so much a refusal as a failure to see Spike as being important to Buffy any more in any way whatsoever.

While of course hoping to be wrong.